Articles
Isn't it nice when technology makes things simpler?
As I mentioned in yesterday’s article, there are still certain steps to take before I have Micro.blog set up the way I intend it to be. This is a test of two new configurations I’m working on.
If everything goes according to plan, this post will be automatically added to Bluesky and LinkedIn. Cross-posting to other services is possible, but I’m taking it slow and starting with only the ones above.
The Micro.publish Obsidian plugin is another thing I’m trying with this post. It has been created on an Obsidian note and will be converted into a blog post with very few mouse clicks. In other words, you are witnessing the tests and preparation I do when producing a video for my YouTube channel.
What inspired me to move from Obsidian Publish to Microblog?
TL;DR: a gateway to a thriving online presence
What if I told you there is a tool that can replace your blog, website, newsletter, podcast, bookshelf, and more? 🤯 It’s even compatible with the ActivityPub protocol.
In a recent article, I discussed how owning a domain and using permalinks can help you seamlessly move from one hosting service to another without losing your audience. Then I published another article devoted to describing a similar approach for your social media presence.
Well, there is a way to combine the best of both words in a single place. Better yet, what if you could also include other services, like a newsletter? Have I mentioned that the price is a fraction of what you would pay for a combination of similar services from other companies?
Since this is too good to be true, I feel like a disclaimer is needed. No, this is not a sponsored post. I paid for my subscription, and no one at Micro.blog had any input on this article or any content I’ve been publishing about them. I’m doing it because, as you already know, I’m an enthusiast.
Anyway, I hope you’ll find the information below helpful.
My previous set-up
I have an institutional website for many years, but have been posting my articles on Medium for a long time to take advantage of the algorithm. Two YouTube channels, one in Portuguese and another in English, a newsletter hosted by Substack, and a presence on multiple social media platforms.
I believe that diversifying like this helps spread the word because I can take advantage of algorithms from multiple platforms. However, my entire business is run by myself, and things can quickly become overwhelming. So much so that last year I was forced to pause my newsletter for several months.
Why Obsidian Publish didn’t work for me
When I moved my website from WordPress to Obsidian Publish, I was trying to simplify things by having my notes and the website in the same tool. But if I’m being honest, it ended up creating more work. Not because of the publishing process, which is easy and straight-forward. The problem was me. I love taking notes, so I suddenly felt compelled to share as much as I could, and that came with its own set of complications.
Instead of just taking notes, I was constantly thinking about how to structure my notes to have them ready for use and, at the same time, good for publishing. Furthermore, my folders structure became a little chaotic due to the numerous additional files needed to create a website. I was constantly afraid of accidentally moving or deleting files.
There’s no way to have a blog when using Obsidian Publish, but I was kind of okay with that because Medium was my blogging platform at the time. I also read numerous complaints about SEO, but I’m not a specialist on this topic and cannot say much about it. However, the final hurdle was the verification process at Mastodon, which could never identify the needed code because of the way Obsidian Publish builds the website.
I couldn’t care less about verification, but I have already been impersonated, and unfortunately, some people following my YouTube channel in Portuguese were scammed. After that, I’ve been constantly trying to do all I can to prevent it from happening again.
What’s next?
In 2022, I tried Micro.blog, but it lasted for less than a year. It was the way the platform handled engagement that made me give up on it. If you would like to learn more about it, I have already explained everything in more detail in another article.
For those of you who are not aware of Micro.blog, we are talking about a complete online presence solution. It is a space to share short posts like ‘tweets’ and pictures, a blog, a website, a newsletter, a podcast hosting service, and many other amenities like bookmarks plus a ‘read it later’ with a highlights feature, a bookshelf, and more. And the price is amazing. US$5 or US$10, depending on the features you need. To learn more about it, I suggest you watch the video below. But beware that it doesn’t cover all its potential.
I still have my two YouTube channels, and they are not going anywhere. But I reactivated my blog on Micro.blog. I won’t stop publishing the articles on Medium, but I started adding a ‘Canonical Link’ that tells Google that the story was originally posted at a different place.
Micro.blog can be used as hubs to share the same content on other websites, like Medium. However, for now, I’m doing it manually.
ActivityPub
Regarding the newsletter, I am still using Substack, but I also intend to transition it to Micro.blog in the future. However, the feature in which I’m most interested is precisely the one that made me live in the first place. The blog is compatible with ActivityPub and, as explained in another article, anyone can follow it from any Fediverse service.
The strategy Flipboard is using inspired me. Their Mastodon instance — flipboard.social — works as a Twitter alternative, where the community can share and interact with one another. As for flipboard.com, it is being converted to be 100% compatible with the ActivityPub protocol. If all of this seems too much, please watch the video below. It may help you better understand the terminology I used above.
My plan is to rebuild my Twitter community on Mastodon, while Micro.blog will host my blog, site, and other services, acting as a central point to help people access all the content I’m constantly sharing online.
27 APR 2024 | UPDATE: I migrated all my followers to @vladcampos@vladcampos.com and that’s the only Fediverse account I’m using now.
Nostalgia
This doesn’t necessarily count as a rational reason, but since when is feeling at home something that’s rational? When I first tried Microblog in 2022, I noticed a familiar face among the team: Jean MacDonald. I had the opportunity to meet here only twice for brief moments during the 2013 and 2014 Evernote Conferences. Nevertheless, the conversations we had were so pleasant that those moments remain etched in my memory to this day.
Jean MacDonald and Vladimir Campos at the 2013 Evernote Conference
In conclusion, there’s nothing terribly wrong with Obsidian Publish. On the contrary, during those months I used it, it proved to be a fast and reliable service. But there’s no blog or ActivityPub there, and those are some reasons why Microblog is gradually becoming my online home.
Another reason, as I mentioned before, is that Micro.blog can work as a hub for publications. At some point in the future, when I finish my migration process, I’ll start using it to automatically cross-post content to other social media platforms.
Combined with all the other benefits I mentioned above, I’m expecting Micro.blog to significantly reduce the work I currently do every time I publish a new article or video.
Obsidian's new editor is a big step in the right direction
As a user, I enjoy Markdown. However, as an instructor, I almost hate it. Most of my clients find it challenging to understand and use, especially in a world where every basic text editor has a formatting bar.
We, the Markdown enthusiasts, see it as a great invention, and it is, but it is meant for people like us. My first computer was an Apple II+ where I learned to write programs in Basic. If you are a Markdown lover, I bet you have a similar background or passion for technology. But how many people do you think there are like this in the world?
The good news is that the Obsidian team seems to be steadily figuring out a way to allow users to pick their preferred text formatting method without any hassle.
What is Markdown?
It is a set of characters used to format text in compatible editors. For example, if you put one asterisk on each side of a word or sentence, the Markdown editor will show it in italics. So, to use it, all one has to do is memorize all the symbols and use them in a compatible editor. Since there are not a lot of formatting options and, at the same time, many compatible editors exist, dominating and using Markdown is not hard. But why would one do that instead of clicking the “I” or “B” or any other formatting icon on a formatting bar?
Another way to think of Markdown is as a simpler version of HTML, which is the language used to make the pages you access online with a browser.
My background
I learned how to create my first website back in the 1990s by looking at other people’s source code. But that’s as far as I went. I was unable to learn any other advanced programming language, even those that are only slightly more complicated than HTML. However, having this background made me look at Markdown and find it to be the easiest thing to learn and use on the planet.
I’m confident to say that people with similar backgrounds, for example, Excel enthusiasts, will also find Markdown super easy to learn and use. However, that is too much for people who only use computers as basic tools. I know this because I have seen it happen to my clients time and time again.
Trello is a great tool I use a lot in my consulting business, but it took them ages to adopt a regular text editor. Before that, the only way to format text was by using Markdown, and only a very few of my clients were willing to use it. It was rare that anyone took the time to learn it.
An entry barrier
All that said, I always saw Markdown as one of the biggest barriers to any non-tech-savvy person thinking of adopting or switching to Obsidian. Again, I’m not making assumptions here. I don’t have numbers, but I’m constantly hearing complaints from clients and reading comments on my videos and articles about how complex it is.
It’s true that one has to memorize just a handful of symbols to use it, but that’s not natural, especially when all the other text editors regular people use have a formatting bar. Most people don’t even use Ctrl+B, I, or other formatting shortcuts. Clicking on icons is significantly more intuitive.
A big step in the right direction
If you haven’t yet, I invite you to watch the video below and stay with me for a moment while I move items from one column to another on a table using Markdown. No matter how much you love Markdown, that’s insane! It’s a huge waste of time.
Thankfully, Obsidian 1.5 added a terrific table editor while keeping all the Markdown behind the scenes for the enthusiasts. Another important addition is right-clicking a word to format it or right-clicking on the note to add items like tables, paragraphs and many others. Again, the Markdown is still there.
The gradual adoption of more familiar ways to format text is a big thing. In my opinion, this is the way to go. It will attract more non-tech-savvy users while keeping the Markdown layer under the hood.
Great move, Obsidian!
The first book of 2024
I still prefer eBooks and my Kindle for a multitude of reasons, but #bookstores and used bookstores are still the kings of discoverability. I found this one in a random store during my last trip, and I am really enjoying it (affiliate link).
Prisoners Of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall.
Will 2024 be my first year without Evernote?
I think it’s fair to say that everyone was a bit astonished when the news broke on the third day of 2023. Bending Spoons, a company barely anyone knew about, had acquired Evernote.
For the past 15 years, I have never considered leaving Evernote. To be more precise, the thought never crossed my mind. Now it looks like 2024 will mean more to me than just a new year. Maybe it will be a year without Evernote. But it’s rare for something so big to happen suddenly. We have to go back to the beginning of 2022 to understand what’s going on.
I was already experimenting with Obsidian for my video production workflow when some of my clients asked me to help them build their workflows on Obsidian. That ended up starting a feedback loop of fresh ideas and more experimenting and teaching. Long story short, by the end of 2022, this learning and teaching system was at full speed. Then, boom! The acquisition news in January 2023. And, let’s not forget the chaos Twitter was in because of its own acquisition. What if Evernote experienced the same fate?
There you have it. It was a perfect storm forming before my very eyes.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s rare for only one event to cause a big change. It is usually the culmination of many small things happening simultaneously that creates the perfect conditions.
Most of my notes—about 80% of them—are still in Evernote. But if I’m quoting Pareto, the 20% of notes I’m using 80% of the time are already in Obsidian. And this makes all the difference. When I need to find something, chances are that Obsidian will have it. Which ended up helping me create the habit of opening Obsidian first. Oops!
Another important aspect of Obsidian is the fact that the mobile clients are fully functional. During short trips or vacations, I do not bring a computer with me, and I can still use Obsidian on my iPad as if I were at my office computer.
It’s not all roses, though
I was an early adopter of Postash.io back in 2014, and I loved the fact that I could convert any of my Evernote notes to pages of a website or blog posts. Sadly, the service never worked properly, and I ended up going back to a conventional website hosting service. Obsidian Publish seemed like the perfect opportunity to try that again, but although it is a very reliable service, it came with its own set of problems. As you already know, I went back to a traditional website hosting service. But this is a story for another day.
For the moment, I will leave you with this. It’s more likely than not that 2024 will be the year I switch from Evernote to Obsidian.
Happy New Year!
L'arbre des 3 Frontières
Thanks to the Schengen Agreement, I started my day in Luxembourg, visited France for a while, and then had lunch in Germany. The fact that anyone in the EU can freely cross borders is a wonderful thing that should never be taken for granted.
My travel coffee kit
The AeroPress is part of a small kit 🫣 I always travel with to be able to brew my own coffee every day.
Back to the Source
Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee
To give you a sense of how long ago I read the book Weaving the Web, I still had a Walkman lying around, and since I accidentally picked it up in cassette format, that’s how I “read” it. Yes, you got that right: cassette tape.
Regardless, I remember hearing Tim Berners-Lee explain that his original concept for the Web was a more interactive knowledge-building and linking process. I don’t recall his exact words, but this was the idea. At least, this is what my memory tells me. Which reminds me of another great book, Memory Illusion by Dr. Julia Shaw. But I digress.
That stuck with me for a long time because, for many years, all we had were websites with static pages. No interaction at all. It was more like a one-way knowledge flow, but it was a start. Then came the blogs and the comments, but it still didn’t feel like what he meant in his book. When social media started gaining popularity, I thought to myself, Maybe this is it. Well, I was wrong. We ended up with a lot of “islands” and too much misinformation.
I don’t think a Web based on the ActivityPub protocol is precisely what he meant, but connecting all these online “islands” feels to me more like his vision. Another step, if you will.
Anyway, it’s been too long since I read this book, and I’ll use the last week of 2023 to revisit it. It’s a great book! Dr. Shaw’s book is also excellent, but it’s more recent, and I have already read it twice.
That’s it for this one. I hope you have a lovely day!
Future-proofing my online presence
My thoughts and opinions on ActivityPub and the Fediverse are numerous, and I am already working on an article to share them with you. For this one, the plan is to explain my strategy to future-proof my online presence.**
If you don’t know what ActivityPub and the Fediverse are, please watch my recent video about this topic. But the most important information to understand is that one can follow and be followed, as well as engage, regardless of what social platform is being used.
Many services have been compatible with the ActivityPub protocol for a long time now, but I don’t think we can deny the fact that if large corporations adopt it, the chances of it becoming mainstream are higher. And based on the recent announcement by Flipboard and the tests being conducted by Threads, I’m pretty sure this is what’s happening right now.
Again, I suggest watching my recent video on the topic to understand the details and implications. For now, let us discuss the reasons behind my choice of Micro.blog and Mastodon.
Micro.blog
I believe that Micro.blog is a link between the old Internet, before social media, where people used to write on websites and blogs, and the new Internet that is all about sharing everything.
At Micro.blog, you can make a website with static pages and and also have a blog. The cool thing about the blog is that it uses the ActivityPub protocol. This means that anyone using any ActivityPub service can read and engage with your posts.
But there’s more, or, should I say, less? If you read Manton Reece’s book about starting a Micro.blog, or follow him online, you’ll see that he is really into writing short posts. It is also evident in the company’s name and the blog feature on Micro.blog.
If one writes simple posts, such as tweets, they will be added to the timeline, like what happens on Twitter and other similar services. On the other hand, if a long-form text is created, that will become a blog post like this article you are reading. However, it will also be added to the timeline with a link to the article. And, once again, that timeline is compatible with ActivityPub.
All these means that someone, say, on Mastodon, can follow and engage with all the posts without ever being a Micro.blog user. You can use my blog to try it out. Just look for @social@vladcampos.com on your preferred Fediverse platform.
NOTE: There are already many great interviews with Manton Reece about Micro.blog out there, but I’m thrilled to share that he recently accepted an invitation to have a conversation about all this on my YouTube Channel.
But if Micro.blog is both services in one, why would I need Mastodon? Well, a year ago, I tried using it alone, but I had no success. I left because of a design decision. There are no likes or re-posts on the Micro.blog timeline. To explain why I care about it, let’s talk about Mastodon.
Mastodon
When I first heard about Micro.blog, I was already a Mastodon user, where I was building a new community after leaving Twitter. On doing so, I quickly learned how important likes and re-posts are. Because of them, I got to know so many nice people re-posted by someone I was following. The same thing happened the other way around. People re-posting me on Mastodon helped me get noticed by others.
Nevertheless, I fully understand Micro.blogs decision. The goal is to stimulate conversations, but, to be honest, I felt very isolated there. And at that particular moment, I did not have a significant number of people following me on Mastodon, and I still do not. Until these days, I keep discovering interesting people and communities through re-posts.
How is this future-proofing my online presence?
First of all, ActivityPub is a W3C protocol. Then, there’s the fact that major corporations are beginning to embrace it. But the most important reason is that ActivityPub-compatible social media allows you to move between different services and bring all of your followers with you. Let’s say that in the future, Micro.blog adds likes and re-posts and I decide I want to leave Mastodon. I’ll be able to easily do it, bringing with me all the followers, whom, by the way, I prefer to call community.
This is such a win-win situation. Whenever and wherever it pleases me, I am free to move, and I don’t have to ask anyone from my community to move to a different social media platform. Furthermore, if they also wish to move somewhere else, that’s fine. As long as it is compatible with the ActivityPub protocol, neither technology nor CEOs will prevent us from keeping in touch with each other.
The Plan
My website has already been migrated to Micro.blog, and from now on, I’ll be blogging from here. But I will continue to post on Medium, which is, incidentally, also in the process of adopting the ActivityPub protocol.
Regarding micro-posting, I’ll be doing it on Mastodon. So, if one wishes to follow only my articles or only my micro-posts, they can do so. Or, they can also follow both. And the best part is that anyone can follow and interact with me using any ActivityPub-compatible service. This is absolutely remarkable!
Technology is neither good nor bad...
It’s all about how we use it
The year is 2012, and I brought a real camera to the Evernote Conference to make sure I would end up with good pictures. It was a wise move, but there was a problem with this one picture.
The small display of the camera might have made me believe everything was okay, but the picture I asked someone passing by to take of Phil Libin and me ended up being blurry. I think you can imagine my disappointment when I transferred the pictures to my computer later that day. It was the only one I had with him, so I kept it.
Fast-forward to the era of AI…
The other day, I was searching for a picture to test the Google Photos unblur feature, and I thought of the one with Phil Libin. Google Photos fixed it in seconds with a single click. I’m impressed. That’s so cool.
Before and after pictures
Original picture from 2012
Picture fixed by AI in 2023
